Blood and Chocolate

Leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten:
My question is to the Prime Minister. In the light of the last answer about SPC, can the Prime Minister explain the difference between his government’s treatment of SPC on the one hand and Cadbury on the other?

Prime Minister, Tony Abbott:
Well, they are totally different circumstances. One, if I may say so, was a request for business welfare; the other, if I may say so, was a local tourism infrastructure grant.

Well, the prime minister may well say so but it’s time to start asking if such glib and convenient answers are good enough. Every incoming government has a period of finding its feet while enjoying the hubris of an election win but now that we are over 15% of the way into the Abbott government’s first term, we should be able to expect some more serious answers than this.

Of course it’s true that the Cadbury factory in Hobart is also a major tourist attraction. It’s a tourist attraction because… Hello? It’s a Chocolate Factory! Chocolate factories are awesome! Chocolate is awesome and everything to do with chocolate is awesome. The science is settled, the debate is over. By any measure, canning fruit is not as sexy.

If Cadbury has managed to diversify their business by making their factory a major tourist attraction, then good for them. However, in making the distinction between business welfare and tourism infrastructure, the subtext seems to be that SPC could have got a government grant if they did tours of the facility.

For all I know, maybe they do. I do know that to those who take an interest in how things are produced, a tour of the SPC factory (or the Holden or Toyota factories for that matter) would be just as fascinating as a tour of the Cadbury factory. To be blunt though, nobody ever made adorable movies about an eccentric, reclusive genius and his fruit cannery, did they? Based on the distinction the government has made, SPC is being punished for not being cool enough.

Also, call me old fashioned, but I always thought factories were primarily about making stuff. If they can expand their business into tourism as well, that’s great, but if Cadbury gets grants because they’re a tourist attraction, that puts them on the same level as the blacksmith shop at Sovereign Hill – less a place of making things and more a reminder of how we used to.

Now, I’m not assuming that SPC needs the grant. The parent company of SPC-Ardmona is Coca-Cola Amatil. I am not smart enough to crunch the numbers, but I remain to be convinced of whether the local bottler of the world’s most popular sweet fizzy water really needs $25 million from the federal government. Equally, I wonder whether one of the world’s most famous chocolate producers really needs a $16 million grant for what is basically a sideline.

However, mature government is about weighing options and choosing the greater good. Maybe CCA is just trying it on, but what would happen if SPC closed? It wouldn’t just affect the SPC workers who lose their jobs and the farmers who used to supply them. No business exists in a bubble. The sudden reduced purchasing power of those who lose their jobs will affect other businesses throughout the region with more job losses and possible business closures. At what point does all the lost tax revenue and increased welfare payments that go with business closures cost the country more than $25million? Again, I’m not clever enough to crunch those numbers, but the Coalition in opposition used to love cost/benefit analyses. Have they done one on this, or are they just being ideological?

Can we really not afford it? To put it in some kind of perspective, $25 million is…

The government that was elected on a promise of ending wasteful spending apparently thinks these are all wise investments even though it is an open question as to whether any of them will contribute anything to the economy.

To complicate matters further, this week Qantas renewed calls for government assistance. Tourism infrastructure doesn’t get much bigger than a national airline. I make no comment on whether any company truly deserves government aid but the government’s justifications for its priorities just don’t add up. They have painted themselves into a corner and it’s not even six months in.

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10 thoughts on “Blood and Chocolate”

Unless the ALP under Shorten gets its act together through some serious, thoughtful refutations of this rabble of wicked children’s arrogant and ridiculous statements, it won’t make any difference if they’re painted into a corner …

I think Abbott once admitted that the difference was that one was pre-election (possibly countering a Labor offer) and the other post-election. But then realised such honesty was taboo. The public are quite happy to be bribed, but don’t want to acknowledge that that is exactly how elections work.

The other aspect is that Cadbury is in Andrew Wilkie’s seat so Tony Abbott was doing some arse-selling in the campaign to try and win it off him. SPC was in a safe Liberal seat. I say ‘was’ because I’d bet that it’s now a safe Sharman Stone seat, whoever she chooses to align herself with.

Well now – I do agree that making that kind of small minded petty distinctions (that are really all about gaining electoral support) is another sign of the short sighted attitude of this government. What I do want to address is precisely why Cadbury and SPC (Coca-Cola) are asking for a grant in the first place and even more importantly why did one receive it for as stated in the post something only slightly more than a sideline for such a large corporation. They’re going to dump sludge in the reef and have agreed to expand the Abbott Point Coal terminal in the Whitsundays as well as considering nuclear waste disposal in SA, not to mention the entire issue of asylum seekers – all of these #***#(no polite terms exist) projects based on the premise that Australia is in financial decline due to the “whatever is being blamed this week” and that such things are needed.
Then they give a grant to a chocolate factory that is in no financial distress just for having a few tourists wander through and take photos (& Ok drool over the lovely lovely chocolate). What next will be taking oompa loompas in as refugees since they would be cooler that starving, oppressed, brutalized people fleeing for their lives. OK rant nearly over – one last thing if tourism is so important they why are they working at destroying one on 7 natural wonders of the world – I live in the Whitsundays – we need the tourists – we don’t need the sludge polluting our environment.

In the past the Cadbury factory did have tours, as did cigarette factories but they let the facility flop into disuse and the taxpayer is now expected bring it up to date. If tobacco factories can take in tourists then SPC could too. One circumstance that has not been mentioned is that Cadbury chocolate will not guarantee that all the cocoa beans with which they make their products are not harvested by child slave labour. Fruit pickers don’t get paid much but at least they are neither children nor slaves and the fruit is grown in Australia.

In fairness, there were a lot of interjections during that answer, which are shown in Hansard but I edited them out so as not to distract from the main point, so some of those verbal placeholders may have just been trying to make himself heard.

Even so, you’re right. The distinction between when he is rehearsed and believes what he is saying, and when he is floundering, trying to come up with a plausible answer, is stark.

More insidious is the scandal regarding the pulling of the nutrition website.

Or the $6 GP fee. It is now spruiked as coming from Terry Barnes, a former Health Adviser to Abbott. But an original report listed it as a submission from The Australian Centre for Health Research, a confidence-building name, except that most of the directors happen to be from the health insurance industry. And it makes perfect business sense – increase health costs, more people take out private health insurance.

In old fashioned bribery money changes hands. The more sophisticated version is for favours to be banked.

Abbott is calling on a Royal Commission to root out corruption in the unions. Yes, there is corruption in the unions, which the unions themselves have ignored and railed to deal with, and it has to be rooted out. But far more damaging for us is the corruption in the political structure